Is not the ultimate American paranoiac fantasy that of an individual living in a small idyllic Californian city, a consummerist paradise, who suddenly starts to suspect that the world he lives in is a fake, a spectatle staged to convince him that he lives in a real world, while all people around him are effectively actors and extras in a gigantic show? The most recent example of this is Peter Weir‘s The Truman Show (1998), with Jim Carrey playing the small town clerk who gradually discovers the truth that he is the hero of a 24-hours permanent TV show: his hometown is constructed on a a gigantic studio set, with cameras following him permanently. Sloterdijk‘s “sphere” is here literally realized, as the gigantic metal sphere that envelopes and isolates the entire city. This final shot of The Truman Show may seem to enact the liberating experience of breaking out from the ideological suture of the enclosed universe into its outside, invisible from the ideological inside. However, what if it is precisely this “happy” denouement of the film (let us not forget: applauded by the millions around the world watching the last minutes of the show), with the hero breaking out and, as we are led to believe, soon to join his true love (so that we have again the formula of the production of the couple!), that is ideology at its purest? What if ideology resides in the very belief that, outside the closure of the finite universe, there is some “true reality” to be entered?(2)

I’m saying that because is it involves the use of some new tool and it finally feels like I had enough varied stuff to put something coherent together. “If you fail to understand the precise point the film is making than you have not understood it.”

—
So the name of the Film is

You may wonder how this related to the material but given the constraints of time I have decided to construct a longer more ruminated on piece of “film” and therefore certain aspects may only become concrete after a few episodes.
You may also question the style of the video and my only comment there is that time is what is needed. Time and huge embracing screens or isolation tanks filled with salt and wired for video.

Words

“Some have asked if I did not feel lonesome”
“If there were anyone else”

Henry David Thoreau Walden
From the Librivox recording

“Leading A modest life in an Idyllic fake… ….staged to keep him satisfied.”

Is not the ultimate American paranoiac fantasy that of an individual living in a small idyllic Californian city, a consummerist paradise, who suddenly starts to suspect that the world he lives in is a fake, a spectatle staged to convince him that he lives in a real world, while all people around him are effectively actors and extras in a gigantic show? The most recent example of this is Peter Weir’s The Truman Show (1998), with Jim Carrey playing the small town clerk who gradually discovers the truth that he is the hero of a 24-hours permanent TV show: his hometown is constructed on a a gigantic studio set, with cameras following him permanently. Sloterdijk’s “sphere” is here literally realized, as the gigantic metal sphere that envelopes and isolates the entire city. This final shot of The Truman Show may seem to enact the liberating experience of breaking out from the ideological suture of the enclosed universe into its outside, invisible from the ideological inside. However, what if it is precisely this “happy” denouement of the film (let us not forget: applauded by the millions around the world watching the last minutes of the show), with the hero breaking out and, as we are led to believe, soon to join his true love (so that we have again the formula of the production of the couple!), that is ideology at its purest? What if ideology resides in the very belief that, outside the closure of the finite universe, there is some “true reality” to be entered?(2)

Text by Slavoj Žižek As read by a computer(apparently).
It refers to the Phillip Dick Novel “Time Out Of Joint”
Which was a really neat book about this dude who does crosswords or some other mindless thing unawares that he is also somehow determining the launching trajectory of these missiles that are being fired at the moon.

“Classically in philosophy there was a distinction drawn between
Being with a capital B,
Which a philosophical way of writing the word God or Fundamental Entity
Being Big B.
and
being/entity
one among which is dasein
Heidegger, However,and I don’t want to mislead you because many readers have been mislead
Heidegger
is no humanist.”

Rick Roderick From his lecture series Titled””Self under Siege” lecture series”(I’ll note where it is next time i hear it if needed)

Man-It’s beautiful here
I can see the whole valley

Woman-yes and there’s our cottage down there
it’s time to go back isn’t it

Man-“Yes.
but we’re not going
there is nothing there for us.
ah the town’s empty no ones going back
there’s no reason to…none at all…

Nope i certainly don’t know what I’m doing. I tried out the “Non-linear” video editor Edius 5 and found that just like the Pinnacle Studio 14 Hd it proved to be much to frustrating and cryptic to deal with. Perhaps Sony Vegas has spoiled it for me but that program seems so intuitive. It’s just so easy to drag and drop music and sound, still and motion pictures all in a a program that doesn’t tax my system. Perhaps this is why most films really suck. It’s just to technical. I can’t imagine Proust or Kafka wasting their time setting type or making paper. I guess I have a theory about art that doesn’t stress technique. I mean it’s all technique in a way but the striving for technical polish destroys the creation. A good example is rock music. Technically great musicians don’t make compelling music they make impressive music. A Micheal Bay or a Tony Scott film may look nice but since the creator’s purpose is to impress it ends up just being a pointless exercise. Of course I’ve certainly seen the other side of it where some high concept “arteest” who has nothing to say just jumbles some crap together and gets a patron. I wonder how deep these artists actually are? How can people without any curiosity, raised on mass media actually say anything worth hearing. But that’s probably too harsh I mean I love a cartoon like the Family Guy because it seems honest somehow. In the end it’s vapid and pointless but at the same time it brings all the other mass media schtick into perspective. That’s why it’s so great but at the same time it is just pointing out how little compelling “entertainment” there is available. One more thing…We live In New Times… I can freely listen to all this highbrow stuff without succumbing to any rote paths. I can combine anything I want, I have all the capabilities at my fingertips to create a new cinema with the depth of great literature. This is the kind of thing that will never be done by large groups of people with “careers” in art. It will only come from those who somehow comfortably exist outside of these straitjackets. If your the kind of person who thinks that NPR or PBS is in anyway intelligent or interesting you just are not there yet. At some point I thought that too but it was a mistake and if you don’t get out soon you will find your self dying in a tiny little world which you could have transcended if only you had the courage , anger or depression to see what you were actually involved in. It’s all too much to talk about. I can feel this line of thought begin to fray. I’ve spent the last few years not looking at TV except for the Cartoons and since what’s on TV is their major subject I am beginning to lose the references. Personally I like to surround myself with philosophy lectures and audiobooks. Since these things can be obtained for free I just play them in the back round all day long. Hubert Dreyfus, Rick Roderick, Robert Solomon and Slavoj Žižek have hundreds and hundreds of hours of audio and video available that actually takes your head out of your ass. This kind of serious thought is much more fun to engage and there is absolutely none of it on the mass media. It’s strange just how many hours of crap is produced every year and there is not one show or documentary or drama with anything even approaching the kinds of viewpoints and Ideas that are talked about in all of these guys lectures. Of course listening to it is not something anyone who has a vested interest in the current culture could do without destroying their opinion of the life they have led, especially if they have a good job or some religious prejudice. However the vastness of the space opened up by them makes the current tiny little worlds most people live in seem like a complete waste. One quick example would be a person who has spent their life espousing fiscal responsibility and good honest hard work. The don’t make waves and they are really dedicated to their work. What happens to a person like that? Well in today’s culture they end up alone in a nursing home wondering what exactly it is they accomplished. Perhaps they were a banker who finally realizes that all the money they manipulated suddenly dissappeared before their eyes or maybe they are a minister who despite their best efforts was only able to pretend to believed in God all the while actually living in fear. Someone who spends their life working retail or food service don’t actually accomplish as much in their whole lives as a construction worker, nurses aid or garbage man does everyday. These phantom worlds are the province of the vast majority of people. Philosophy and actual art challenges a person to drop out of this society because it does not go anywhere and it never will. The mass Media is a huge consensual penal colony. Ok now I forgot what I was talking about. Oh yeah. I want to use Sony Vegas but I screwed up the installation and I need to reinstall my operating system before I can use it. I also need to figure out how to use the Quick-time .mov format in it since that’s what the canon 7d put’s out. I wait to get this tripod it’s made of aluminum and can hold 11 pounds!! I also have a flash coming and a 16 gig flash card but the most important thing is a wide angle lens which is really hard to come by with the APS-C sensored camera’s( i had to get a Canon EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS SLR Lens) unless your willing to spend quite a bit of money. Here is the last Film Short I made (before I got the 7D)

Here is a brand new film. It’s started some musical experiments I was doing. I was playing this cheap casio keyboard and heard something so i kept playing the same thing over and over then I tried to make something similar using the higher quality fruity loops program. Part of the spoken sections come from an audio version of Slavoj Žižek’sThe Matrix, or, the Two Sides of Perversion and another part comes from an NPR broadcast(inadvertantly broadcasting something uesful) adaptation of the Ray Bradbury story The Wind by Brigham Young University(of all places). The phot0graphs consist of various pieces from a MOMA art torrent that’s been going around.

The underlying theme is always somewhere beyond my immediate grasp so if there are strange and disturbing things in it they weren’t put there in any consciously manipulated way